CyberAgent has signed a business alliance agreement with MAPPA and bought a stake in MHD, the company that sits above the animation studio. Both companies announced the deal on November 11. Neither side disclosed how large the stake is or what it cost.
Manabu Otsuka runs MAPPA as president and CEO, and he holds the same two titles at MHD. That arrangement tells you most of what you need to know about how the studio is structured: the production side and the holding side are the same person's problem.
What the two companies say they will do
The agreement covers a lot of ground. Planning and production are the obvious part. Beyond that, the two companies list broadcasting and streaming, games, merchandise and events as areas where they intend to work together.
The stated reasoning is a combination of MAPPA's animation production and CyberAgent's reach in media, advertising, games and IP development. Both companies also frame the deal around what they call a "creator first" culture.
Takahiro Yamauchi, CyberAgent's representative director and president, described the thinking in a statement released with the announcement:
"We have deep respect for anime culture that has been cultivated over many years, and for the passion that creators pour into each and every work. As fellow leaders of our generation in the industry, Mr. Otsuka and I adopt 'Creative First' as our shared value."
He added that the company wants "great stories to cross borders and reach audiences."
MAPPA's own statement struck a similar note, saying the studio has been asking how best to deliver its work to the people who watch it, and that working with partners who bring different strengths had become important to that question.
They are not strangers
This is an expansion of a relationship that already exists. The two companies have worked together on planning, distribution and broadcasting through ABEMA, and on anime based on games. The new agreement is meant to formalize and widen that arrangement rather than start from zero.
CyberAgent has been building toward this for a few years. The company set up an Anime & IP Division in 2024, pulling planning, IP development, promotion and merchandising under one structure aimed at both Japan and overseas markets. It established an animation studio called CA Soa. In June it opened Canvas Kyoto, a creative hub meant to develop creators in the Kansai region.
The group's animation production arm also changed shape this year. Cygames Pictures became a consolidated subsidiary of CyberAgent on February 27, then renamed itself Cypic on April 6. CyberAgent founded Cygames back in 2011, and that company produced Uma Musume Pretty Derby, Rage of Bahamut and Granblue Fantasy before opening an anime division in March 2015 and a production subsidiary in April 2016.
CyberAgent's interest in automation is worth noting alongside all this. It created in-house guidelines in April 2024 for how its creators may use generative AI and large language models for images, aimed at avoiding copyright problems while stating that current generative AI cannot produce a usable end product on its own. The company has run an AI Lab since 2016, released a Japanese-language large language model in May 2023, and set up both a Game AI Lab and an Animation AI Lab in October 2023.
What MAPPA brings and what it gets
MAPPA is known for Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man and Attack on Titan The Final Season. It has spent the past two years pushing past pure production work. The studio runs licensing businesses in Japan and overseas, launched its own music label called mappa records in 2025, and has been taking a bigger share of the business side of its own titles.
It also has outside partners already. Netflix signed a strategic partnership with MAPPA in January, making the streamer the exclusive home for a number of future original titles and giving the two companies a broader working arrangement that runs from story development through merchandise. In February, MAPPA said it would absorb its sibling studio Contrail through a merger, taking on that studio's rights and obligations.
The studio is in the middle of its 15th anniversary exhibition at the Yurakucho Museum in Tokyo, which runs from September 16 to December 27 and then travels to Fukuoka between January and March 2027.
For CyberAgent, the appeal is a proven production house with an international catalog. For MAPPA, the appeal is a partner with advertising, streaming and game money behind it, plus a distribution arm in ABEMA at a time when studios are trying to keep more of the value of their own work.
Why this matters beyond the press release
Anime studios have spent the last several years arguing that production companies capture too little of the upside from hits they animate. MAPPA has been one of the louder voices on that point, and its moves (own label, licensing, deeper involvement in distribution) all point the same direction. A media conglomerate buying into the parent company gives the studio capital to keep doing that without selling itself outright.
The deal also fits a pattern in the Japanese industry this year: game and advertising money moving into animation production capacity. For the size of the business behind that shift, see our report on the global anime market's record 4.45 trillion yen year. CyberAgent is not the only company making that bet, but it now has a stake in one of the country's most closely watched studios.
Nothing was announced about specific projects. No titles, no release plans, no staffing changes. Anyone reading the announcement as confirmation of a particular adaptation is reading something that is not there.
Source: Anime News Network and Anime Corner, citing CyberAgent and MAPPA.
Source: Anime News Network and Anime Corner, citing CyberAgent and MAPPA
Featured image: Announcement visual for the CyberAgent and MAPPA business alliance, via Anime News Network.
